Readers' Couch

Sunday, September 17, 2017

Thursday, May 25, 2017

Lidsky writes withoutany grandiosity about the debilitating
visual degeneration he went through, or the total blindness that is now a daily
reality.

“With hard work comes strength; with practice, mastery,” he said without pretense about his struggles with the progression from seeing to the realities that a blind person encounters every moment.

Discouragement, disappointment, frustrations are compounded
when one goes through major life changes. At the back of your mind, you
wonder how long people will stick around a dejevted person, and how much they can bear to look
at what you are going through. Many don’t and that’s the only way they know how
to respond. Who can stand being around someone with no more laughter, no more
imagination, and when is there no more emotional and esteem benefits for sticking
around. Yet he wrote about his wife Dorothy, “She never doubted that I would
provide for our family. Decision by insane decision, she was there for me. It
was fine by her if her fancy lawyer husband wanted to reinvent himself as a
construction guy. Her reward? I turned our lives upside down. In New York we
had dreamed I would build a business empire. Last week I told her I would
likely file a personal bankruptcy.”

And his Jewish mother stood by him. “Please be good to
yourself, tatele. (a Yiddish term of endearment or little boy) She heard the pain
in my voice. She wanted to save me.” Only mothers do that: some mothers. They
can hear pain, but you have to make the phone call. She gave him her entire
life savings of $350K in a duffel bag and walked back to her car. That’s what
some mums do because hope is priceless and they would do anything to bring that
back to life.

It is not mentioned in the book but perhaps these two women
are walking by faith and not by sight, and it is a faith that rests not in a
man’s talents and abilities, but in God who is larger than the man they both love.

Some people face debilitating diseases like Lidsky, some
face the unexpected death of a loved one, others battle life-long depression or
deal with crushing post-divorce realities. The world doesn’t need another ‘do
this and you’ll be fine’ book under self-help or Christian titles. Nothing in
this book claims that promise. If anything, it preaches vulnerability and urges
those going through their dreaded and irreversible D’s to breath and focus on
the flow of taking things one step at a time. For many of these on many days, those are
big steps: to focus and to keep moving.

For a book titled “Eyes Wide Open”, he ends with chapter 8
titled “Heart Wide Open.” Lidsky says, “I’m a funny blind guy with an open
heart.” I think so too.

Tuesday, December 6, 2016

Levi Lusko is a pastor – if you checked out his sermons on YouTube, you’d find a pretty regular looking young pastor but one who is passionate and straightforward about obeying God. He and his wife also found themselves in the throes of deep grief when they suddenly lost their fiesty 5-year-old second born, nicknamed Lenya Lion, to a sudden asthma attack a few days before Christmas in 2012.

This book is about facing pain instead of running away from it.You can imagine the anguish and agony of what Lusko went through. But he roared back, and through his encounter with raw pain, he analogized facing it with how one should run to the roar of a lion. Picture the way a pride of lions powerfully attack and overcome its victims - the tactic lies on the ferocious roar of male lions to intimidate and scare their victims to run away from the roar but only to be trapped by female lions who have by now silently surrounded the victim. In other words, Lusko urged us to make the counter-intuitive move towards the roar instead of running away from it.

“If you fail to face your fears,
they will always be right there behind you.”

ABOUT PAIN, Lusko writes, “There is a disorienting endlessness to suffering that makes it easy to lose your bearings. It’s like being lost in the woods of your own soul. Initially, just surviving each moment without hyperventilating is so all-consuming that minutes tick by slower than years. But then one day you poke your head out from your hibernation of hurting, and it can be shocking to find that actual time has passed.”

But what if the pain someone is experiencing is something they can’t quite put a finger on? What if there is no casket that people can see, or a loss that creates a vacuum in life that money and material comfort cannot fill? Lusko offers this advice: “Perhaps for you running toward the roar isn’t about something you’re supposed to do but rather something difficult you have to go through: painful chemotherapy treatments, a divorce, a move across the country that will dislocate you from friendships that mean the world to you….(or Henri Nouwen might have also added – someone not coming through for you in the way you expected). Sometimes there is no other alternative but to face it.”

Gold standard advice: “Remember this:God isn’t scared of what you’re scared of.But you don’t have to pretend like you’re not frightened. Naming your fear is part of getting through it.”

But I thought he added too soon the warning: “try to shine the light and turn off the dark for as many people as possible – myself in the process.” Personally, I feel that trying to use personal tragedies as an inspiration to others is warped if done prematurely before one has sufficiently allowed God to deal with all manners of escapism and avoidance of the root issue.

What I like best from LION:It is possible to go into eternity with a saved soul and a wasted life.
(Even in grief) You must make the choice to walk by faith and
see what can’t be seen with the naked eye.

My take-away: Pain is not just a feeling, but a season of dealing with disappointment for some, or personal loss for others. A season of pain includes but is not all about crying and grieving: life can go on pretty much the same with work, studies, family, meetings, catching with friends, serving in church, etc except it takes much more out of you to just keep up the normalcy. Like physical pain, emotional pain drains you physically and mentally.

My approach for self and others going through seasons of pain – put in small celebrations to disrupt the cycle of grief even for short moments the way old friends had brought up the most trivial reasons just to meet up with me when I was going through my season of brokenness that really touched my heart. And in turn, I do the same for others.

This is pretty much like the book ‘Shattered Dreams’ reviewed in this blog.

Where you can get it: Kinokuniya $28.35, Book Depository from $12.86, Open Trolley $23.20

Monday, December 5, 2016

I met Leila recently at the
Singapore Writers’ Festival. She was there to introduce another speaker and not really for her own book. But I found her
illustrated children’s book ‘All Too Much For Oliver’ on the speaker’s book
table, and asked who the writer was.

I was immediately drawn to her
book that describes a highly sensitive child who prefers a quiet world without
too much stimulation...most of the time.

Young Oliver likes going to the
park. He likes playing in the playground. He likes swimming. He likes parties.
But only if there aren't too many kids around, if it isn’t too noisy, and if there
is one person he likes that could take his attention away from everything else
around him.

I can identify with that right
away. During almost my entire school life, I hardly joined classmates in crowded tuckshops during recess time but preferred slow walks with just one friend in quieter
places further out in the school compound. We would eat only when others were finishing
and clearing out of the school canteen. I was used to friends feeling abandoned and asking,
‘Where have you been?’ but it felt weird to tell them that I needed to get away
to recharge after four lessons of morning class with them! I didn’t even know how to
describe the need for solitude. So I never did. Though I started conversations with others easily, I usually had only one friend at a time and that was totally normal. Any more would
simply wear me out. Yet, I’ve thrown more parties than most people I know. I just need enough time alone to reflect, recharge and enjoy company.

So in short, the book means a lot
to me. And I felt comfortable enough to ask Leila if she was also a highly-sensitive
person (HSP) and she said yes. It was the first time in my life that I could be so
open with another human about this without feeling like an anomaly. It was
liberating!

The Couch Blogger

I'm grateful to my father for teaching me to read, and introducing me to a couple who were voracious readers who modeled for me a lifestyle of reading in the family. Readers are instinctively drawn to each other and I'm grateful for friends who had shared their love of books with me. People who love to cook serve food, but book lovers know that if something is a good read, their friends must have it too because there is nothing more intimate than sharing a book with someone. My reviews are reflections on the books I have read - so they are very personal and stretch your imagination beyond the gist of the book. Whether you are a reader or not, I hope you will find a title here that inspires.